Page 67 of The Butcher

“Godric—”

“How long do you think this will last? Policing those who can’t be policed. Making rules for the lawless and ungoverned. How long do you think it’ll be before your body dangles from a crane over Notre-Dame? You say it’s about morality, but it can’t be if you’re directly profiting from it.”

“You know how much money they save when they don’t have to hide their transports? When they pass straight through customs? When they load their shipments onto the docks in broad daylight? Time and money, all saved under the Fifth Republic. They save far more money than what they pay in taxes.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But the cost of labor has diminished their profits considerably.”

“Well, that’s too fucking bad,” I snapped. “A million euros poorer, what a fucking tragedy.”

“It’s a lot more than a million?—”

“Still inconsequential.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re pulling in a million per day…on average.”

“I’m sure you make a lot more than that, Godric.”

“The money matters, but it doesn’t matter as much as the principle of it. We run our businesses as we see fit, and following the rules of some pompous little prick is a load of bullshit. You have your beliefs and that’s fucking fine, but the rest of us don’t. Don’t make carnivores eat asparagus just because you’re a goddamn vegetarian.”

“You’re going to compare women to asparagus?” I asked in disbelief. “They’re fucking people, Godric?—”

He shot forward to the edge of his seat. “I don’t give a shit. Look at me.” His eyes were stretched wide, and the veins in his neck popped from the strain. “Does it look like I give a shit? Does it?”

“These are daughters?—”

“These are fucking nobodies, Bastien. The homeless, the poor, women stupid enough to walk through a bad neighborhood alone at two in the morning?—”

“So, they deserve this?”

He gave a shrug.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“It’s how the world works, Bastien.”

“But it doesn’t have to—and it’s not going to.”

He returned his chin to his hard knuckles and stared at me. “Why do you care so much, Bastien?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“I think you do when you risk a knife to your back. You think you have control of this city, but a lot of men want you dead.”

“Doesn’t seem that way to me.” No one had tried to come for me, not in my home, not on the street, not at any of the functions of the Senate. Maybe they wanted me dead, but actually executing a plan was a different story.

Godric stared in silence, his eyes locked on my face with the stillness of a statue.

“Godric, you can get into another line of business. It doesn’t have to be this way?—”

“It does, Bastien.”

“You’re telling me, when we were kids, your dream was to be a human trafficker?” I asked incredulously. “Because I remember all you ever wanted to be was a veterinarian.”

Godric burst with laughter. “I forgot about that.”

“You wanted to help animals, and now, you steal women from their homes. That’s who you want to be, Godric?”

“Anything you say before puberty doesn’t count.”

---